LONG RANGE ORDER IN SOLIDS.

Abstract

The book discusses following topics: phase transitions and order parameters, phenomenological theories, superconducting transition temperature, Curie and Neel temperatures, experimental considerations, systematics of long range order, impurities and long range order, domain structures, and order amidst disorder. The material also contains the elements of a research review. There have been a number of new theoretical developments in long range order, such as renormalization group techniques for describing critical phenomena and the density functional formulation for calculating exchange and correlation energies. The authors have tried to sketch the basic ideas underlying these developments.